PERSONAL FINANCE TIPS AND MONEY-SAVING IDEAS!

Quick guide to cash back, points and perks

We love a thrifty trick here at Bamboo, and we’ve covered lots of ways to save money in previous posts. But here’s one we haven’t written about before. Making sure that you sign up for in store club cards and loyalty schemes is one of those time-tested ways to get access to big discount and – if you’re lucky – cash back.

Now, it seems that almost every shop and supermarket has a loyalty scheme of its own at the moment, so we’re not going to go into detail about every single one. However, we have done quite a bit of research and pulled together a few of our recommendations for the best cards when it comes to cash back, points and perks.

The best cards for cash back:

Before we start, let’s just recap what cash back is (just in case you aren’t 100% sure).

Cash back is a credit card that pays the cardholder a small percentage of everything they spend. Often, cardholders can take this cash back as cash, or they can use them as points for purchasing something else, from groceries to commercial flights.

There are a tonne of cash back cards out there, and they all offer different perks. However, they also come with their own terms and conditions. Some give you more points when you buy petrol or diesel, others when you shop in certain places.

We’ve picked two cards that you’re likely to use in your everyday life – the Asda and Tesco cash back cards:

ASDA Cashback Credit Card

If you shop in Asda a lot, then you could be missing out on a tidy amount of cash back; the Asda credit card gives you 1% cash back on all Asda shopping and fuel, as well as 0.5% back when you use it anywhere else.

Now, they might sound like small numbers. What’s 1% here and there? Hardly worth the effort, right? Let’s look at an example though: let’s say that you spend £70 a week on food shopping, £20 on petrol and another £40 around town and online. That’s £130 a week.

With the Asda cash back card, you’d get £1.30 back of that every week. Or, in other words, £67.60 a year. Not a bad return for money you’d have spent anyway, right?

Asda’s cash back only gives you the cash in the form of Asda vouchers, however, so you using them towards your Christmas shop might be a good idea.

Tesco Credit Cards

All Tesco credit cards come with cash back schemes, but, unlike Asda, the cash back is in the form of points. As a rule (unless you get their Premium card) you get one Clubcard point for every £8 spent on everyday things (i.e. not Tesco purchases) and one point for every £4 you spend in Tesco or on Tesco fuel. Tesco’s card isn’t as generous as Asda’s – every point is worth a penny in Clubcard points, so you need to spend a lot to really see a return.

However, if you shop in Tesco regularly, there are Clubcard offers and incentives to boost your points quickly, so they’ll add up quicker than you think.

The real benefit of Tesco over Asda is the versatility of Clubcard points – you don’t have to spend them in Tesco. Unlike Asda’s in-store policy, you can use your Tesco Clubcard points to go to theme parks, restaurants, the cinema or many other things mentioned in their club card catalogue.

Points and perks:

Now, we could spend ages writing a list that essentially said: ‘if you buy books a lot, get the Waterstones loyalty card’ or ‘if you shop in Boots a lot, make sure you get a Boots card’ but chances are, you’ve already got the loyalty cards for the shops you use a lot.

Of course, there are a few general rules to get the most out of your perks.

Sign up to the emails and postal updates: You’ll get lots more vouchers to either save money or get more points

Save, save, save: Save your points until the Christmas period. Stores often do big Christmas events with discounts, so you’ll be able to make your points stretch much further.

Use it, use it, use it: Every time you shop in store or online, whether you spend a pound or a hundred pound, make sure you get your points. If you forget your card, ask ‘can you add them to the receipt?’.

But the best advice we can give when it comes to points and perks is this: Download the Stocard app (available for free on iOS and Android).

This lets you scan you loyalty cards and save them in the app, meaning that you don’t have to fill your purse or wallet with a thousand cards for every store you visit, nor have to worry about forgetting them when you head out shopping!

Have you got a favourite cash back card or loyalty scheme? Or maybe you’ve got some top tips to save even more money when shopping in-store? We’d love to hear from you, let us know in the comments below.